I’m beginning to wonder if he’s not one of “us” just forking around with everyone. It may be a bit of a stretch, but people can be pretty weird, and how screwy is that compared to the Champ if he’s “legit” anyway? Either case stretches credulity.

Byron

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“We say, ‘Love your brother…’ We don’t say it really, but… Well we don’t literally say it. We don’t really, literally mean it. No, we don’t believe it either, but… But that message should be clear.”—David St. Hubbins

[quote author=“SkepticX”]I’m beginning to wonder if he’s not one of “us” just forking around with everyone. It may be a bit of a stretch, but people can be pretty weird, and how screwy is that compared to the Champ if he’s “legit” anyway? Either case stretches credulity.

Byron

Well, even if he were “one of us”, he would be the “bored teenager” incarnation, as he has not contributed one iota of insight to any discussion, but only personifies a particularly unimaginative parody of an ideology. It scares me to think that someone might really believe those things.

I note the appearance of a few new trolls in the space left by his current absence. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as the theists like to say.

As it happens, absence of evidence IS evidence of absence, it is just not DEFINITIVE evidence. This is what theologians don’t get.

We have combed the Earth after unicorns, but there is a total absence of evidence for them. How can we be “sure” unicorns don’t exist here, delicately treading their way through our ever-tightening nets of detection?

[quote author=“arildno”]As it happens, absence of evidence IS evidence of absence, it is just not DEFINITIVE evidence. This is what theologians don’t get.

We have combed the Earth after unicorns, but there is a total absence of evidence for them. How can we be “sure” unicorns don’t exist here, delicately treading their way through our ever-tightening nets of detection?

On that basis, I guess you might be inclined to say that gaps in the fossil record preclude the existence of transitional forms. Just not definitively. :x

[quote author=“arildno”]Note that there is an accumulation of fossil records, and indeed, a continuous process whereby gaps in them are NARROWED.

That’s fine. You need to keep in mind the very real possibility that the contingencies of geological change have erased forever some of the record of life in the past. The real reason this is not critical to the edifice of evolutionary theory is that the rest of the record suffices to demonstrate evolutionary change at gradual rates. And that “gradual” does not have a specific rate in mind.

In particular, we ought to marvel how MUCH paleontologists have been able to gather of evidence, and how good their theories are.

The fossilization process is something happening exceedingly rarely after all. Most biological material is degraded beyond recognition very quickly, that some of it leaves a graven image of itself for all posterity is a true wonder of nature..